Excerpt 1: Beneath The Mushroom Cap

8pm 25th March 2017

As March draws to a close I am once more confounded between exam preparations, essay submissions, and a worldwide pandemic for liberation. My bedroom looks as if a post-it note monster with the mating veracity of a bunny has impregnated and spawned across my walls. And I am swept up in the commotion, so to want to be liberated from the responsibilities of my exams, something only MA and Ph.D. student have the luxury to behold.

So, to me, it seemed that even those who are not truly oppressed, want to be freed. Which sort of felt like wanting freedom from freedom, and so even then with all tautologies aside, I think this is the birth of independence, at which pluralism is the death of control. I suppose this to mean that the identity of the collective has lost its meaning and security. So that to be more secure, of Englishness or Britishness we have opted to be and act alone, even at the irony of denying any other person or country within the United Kingdom their freedom.

Herein Britain and Europe, after the terror attack and then more, there is a growing outcry for retribution, that much like the events of 9/11 spurred the American people to support an oil-war, these attacks spur a continent of unlikely voters, to invest their efforts in bringing western political change, absolved of reform and modernization. It seems to me that Britain or the British majority mood faces the other way in which mainland Europe seems to strive toward. I sensed European togetherness as a way to show solidarity with the bloc, which from my view defined their strength. While on the other hand Britain's catalysts for the leave Europe campaign seemed determined to obscure all equilibrium and sense on the island. Something Remainers take as a personal attack. During this time, and I am sure many other times, I endure many unsophisticated conversations with leavers and fence-sitters alike, and I am dumbstruck at the reproduction of superficiality, in which these unlikely voters, have left their intellectual comfortabilities in which to support. I mean to say that those whom have taken very little interest in art, politics, language, economics, science or math, seem to view themselves as either oracles and arbiters of Britishness, or above it all entirely, so to vote for the majority, as in to appease the colonies most common unintellectual thoughts. This is invigorated by unsupported research, which is the bias driven media rhetoric, which infects their news feed, social networking, and daily lives with imposing headlines and hypothetical unimportance's'. Which breeds nothing more than anger and dissolution, so to want anything other than the uncertainty of conflict.

The change these voters seek is predicated upon greener pastures, in which inviable Britain sinks underneath the weight of modern terrors, which seem to come in droves. I think that the worst aspect of all these grotesque and perpetrating attacks, is that the culprits are British born, and so I condemn that they are traitors of Britain, the Crown and the constitution of lawful democracy to the highest decrees. I suppose these orchestrated attacks are to weaken ideations of European and westernized centers of safety, in which even in a crowd of people are we the citizens of Britain, left with the sensation of feeling unwelcome.

This unsafety is the prerequisite for fear, at which the British propagandists or media outlets indulge. Which to condemn them as isolated incidents is a violation of both sense and intellect. Whose traitor-ship is to their native land to which they were born, housed, and fed, and so if they had any loyalty at all, they would be thankful for the land they were born upon. For was it not our services which grew them, our schools which taught and our hospitals that treated them, before needlessly taking the lives of 6, and scarring the lives of 49 more. I find the location of its occurrence to be the most volatile of the attack conditions, being that it sits on the doorstep of the British parliament, but what can a politician do beyond stare from the window at the death of civility?

It is for many more reasons than this one alone which answers why the losing minority of the referendum had taken to the streets of London to protest divorce and 'unite for Europe'. The campaign even coaxed figureheads which warned "we're living in a dictatorship", and there is a "perpetual sense of anger". I find the first to be a daft exaggeration that not only devalues its sentiment but to demonize the rights of democracy. This is odd because these figures whom I deem to be politically blood-soaked, I find myself agreeing with. When Campbell says, "The media in this country is a right-wing cartel of tax-dodgers that pretends to speak for their readers when they speak for themselves and their vested interest." This is a common scene now across the United Kingdom, in which those that believe and indulge the majority mood, stay in the comforts of delusion, which is exonerated by a placard that reads "In business, lying is a crime. Why not in politics?"

I find this phrase an injustice that has set about the churning wave of reconditioning truth as the lie, and lie as the truth. (the definition of propaganda – (information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.)) Which is exemplified by Young European Movement Edinburgh chairman Jean Francois-Poncet who protests "We want to raise the issue in British lives that you have lies in the referendum campaign that people were not held accountable for and, whether you voted Remain or Leave, that is a real issue." Something I find to be the true injustice of Brexit, in which the accountability of truth was invalidated by the spread of a controlled mood, so that when 51% of people become convinced the EU was in charge of our island, what are the 49% of non-believers to do but seem like a radical aversion from the truth of the opposition. Which is none at all. For here are the headlines.

The Daily Express has opted for 'Dear EU, We're Leaving you', which is immediately followed by the brash subline 'Theresa May's no-nonsense message to Brussels'. There is a reticent absolutism to these statements which is hidden by a grammatical contraction. We're, which hides, we are, as the definitive verb phrase that pre-modifies 'you', as though the Constitution of the European Union was either a singular person or a singular entity. So then do I suppose by terming Brussels as an exaggeration of oppression. The writer for this paper aims to suggest that May will be directing her message to a city and not a legal coalition of member state representatives? Secondly, as the implication is that, we're is about Britain, it has intentionally included the 75% total of peoples who didn't vote or opposed, the mathematical truth of the 2016 referendum would suggest otherwise, to which it should have read 'Due to a 1% majority, the entirety of Britain is forced to accept democracies iron truth'. As a linguist I find there is an audacity and gauche arrogance to both these statements that borders on the mentally juvenile, because surely, there doesn't exist a nonsense version of article 50? (and so why mention it – surely all PM actions should be void of nonsense?) Beyond the rhetoric and the explicitness of the 72pt font, the claims are accompanied by a picture of May penning to paper her signature for the pre-drafted letter to invoke article 50. She is sat hunched in front of a towering fireplace and beside two empty chairs. In the right corner of the shot is a limp Union Jack, something I feign to be metaphoric of foreshadowing. The action shoot, emboldened by a black border, is placed above a white-out-of-black caption which reads 'picture of the historic moment' – for those reading who neither know who this unelected by the UK peoples PM is, or what she is doing. What else is to expect though, from a paper that matches the definitions to Right-Wing, Pro-Conservative, and Eurosceptic. Whom except the 2001 general election, when it backed the Labour Party, the newspaper has declared its support for the Conservative Party at every general election since World War II.

The, prophetically and arrogantly named, Guardian has decided upon an illustrated map-puzzle of the European member states, and missing from the puzzle is N. Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. These pieces, which remain together, are sat at the bottom of the article. I suppose to indicate that this idealism of divorce is a physical change, and not a legal one. What replaces the puzzle spaces of Britain is a statement which writes 'Today. Britain steps into the unknown.' – which seems an odd observation to sum up a leaving body of nations as one entity, or having feet at which to step. I guess the assumption is that every day typically Britain steps into the known. This in turn refers to the path chosen by 26% over 24% of a 100% total voting population. In the brashness of 1% more than half a halves totality. That's democracy.

The Daily Mail takes a receded and motivated approach with a one-word title: 'Freedom'. This aims to assimilate the idea of a British soldier being granted imminent release four years into a ten-year sentence after being found guilty of killing Afghanistan-insurgent in a battlefield execution – with the PM signing a document to invoke article 50. It is unclear to me the connections between the two events beyond the occurrence of their coverage. Then there is the noticeable construction of rhetoric which sub captions the two stories 'On a historic day for…' which is the constant that predetermines two ideas: Britain, and Justice. I guess freedom is a definition that gets thrown about a lot since the USA started substituting it as their prerequisite for a forceful invasion of peace. And so, to what end is a soldier contemptible for killing in war anyhow? Especially one funded by among many other senior members, May's asset-trillionaire husband, contriving to upstand arms deal relations with Saudi-Arabia, relations with tax-avoiding corporations, like Google, Amazon and Starbucks, and all-round being as slippery as a snake. To which May indicates (post-manifesto) 'YOU have a duty to put something back' and the second person impersonal advice that no one sees through, as 'YOU have a debt to YOUR fellow citizens' as a claim to defense and not as it should be an attack on perpetrators of illegal by British decree, tax avoidance. It is rhetoric of retreat, superciliousness, and cowardice. As if they were not even citizens of Britain like us at all, and I suppose if you don't pay tax, then YOU aren't British, especially not by the virtue of responsibility.

I then read The Scotsman, which has a reasonably sized headline which reads 'Scottish Parliament backs call for independence referendum' and I think to myself how strange it must be for Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland because from the way Londoners wrote about it, Brexit seemed to be pioneered by a city that knew the highest waged employees in the cities combined and acted with the warred hand of ignorance that donned the esteem of the richer vote. It seems odd that, for a country that seemed confident in lauding and parading worldwide a strong and stable Brexit, the call for Scottish independence would be openly ignored as news not worthy of the English eye. I aim to say that it is both the presence and the omission of news that determines moralism and respect.